people of the country.  Things got constantly worse, not better.  The Austrian rulers in Italy once offered their subjects some compensation for the loss of nationality in a policy which defended them from the encroachments of the court of Rome, but the wise principles introduced by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. had been cast to the winds.  Unless Austria completely reversed her policy, and became the promoter of constitutional government throughout Italy, nothing could save her; the problem would be solved by war or revolution.

It ought to have been apparent that, as far as Piedmont was concerned, the control of the situation had passed out of the hands of the Government.  The youth of Lombardy was streaming into the country to enlist either in the army or in the corps of “Hunters of the Alps,” which was now formed.  Cavour looked on this patriotic invasion with delight; “They may throw me into the Po,” he said, “but I will not stop it.”  Had he wished, he could not have stopped the current of popular excitement at the point it had reached.  It was the knowledge of this, joined to the threatened destruction of all his hopes, that well-nigh overpowered him when—­at the eleventh hour—­in spite of engagements and treaties, Napoleon seemed to have suddenly decided not to go to war.  Prince Bismarck once declared that he had never found it possible to tell in advance whether his plans would succeed; he could navigate among political events, but he could not direct them.  Since the meeting at Plombieres, Cavour had undertaken to direct events, the most perilous game at which a statesman can play.  For a moment he thought that he had failed.

CHAPTER IX

THE WAR OF 1859—­VILLAFRANCA

On the whole it can be safely assumed that Napoleon’s hark back was real, and was not a move “pour mieux sauter.”  He was not pleased at the cool reception given in Italy to a pamphlet known to have been inspired by him, in which the old scheme was revived of a federation of Italian States under the presidency of the Pope.  The Empress was against war—­it was said “for fear of a reverse.”  Perhaps she thought already what she said when flying from Paris in 1870:  “En France il ne faut pas etre malheureux.”  But more than this fear, anxiety for the head of the Church made her anti-Italian, and, with her, the whole clerical party.  Nor was this the limit of the opposition which the proposed war of liberation encountered.  Though France did not know of the secret treaty, she knew enough to understand by this time where she was being led, and with singular unanimity she protested.  When such different persons as Guizot; Lamartine, and Proudhon pronounced against a free Italy,—­when no one except the Paris workman showed the slightest enthusiasm for the war,—­it is hardly surprising if Napoleon, seized with alarm for his dynasty, was glad of any plausible excuse for a retreat.  Such